The Ketchikan Gateway Borough School Board delayed adoption of a reduction in force plan during its Wednesday night meeting, likely pushing approval to later this month.
The board voted 1-6, failing to pass the plan in its current form, which includes how the district can implement staffing cuts. They plan to revisit an amended version at their next regular meeting.
The school district is over $5 million in debt and enrollment is on the decline. Interim Superintendent Sheri Boehlert said a RIF plan is necessary in outlining why cuts might happen and how they can be implemented.
“It talks about the the why and the who and the when,” Boehlert said. “Basically, it outlines that we have a decrease in enrollment, that it may impact our teachers, and that that would come into play once we are talking about our budget.”
At a special meeting last Saturday, the board approved the RIF plan on first reading. Most board members acknowledged that they didn’t see it as complete without input from the Ketchikan Education Association, the local educators’ union. But they wanted to keep the process moving.
They directed district leaders to meet with representatives from the KEA about the plan before Wednesday night’s second reading.
Boehlert said those meetings did happen, and changes were made. But the district ran out of time to get the new iteration of the RIF plan approved by their legal team and into Wednesday night’s board packet. She said most of the edits “were not hugely changing the content” of the plan. But, she said, she still wasn’t comfortable having the board approve something different than what’s been discussed. She’d prefer a clean document.
“While we had a good faith effort to try to get this moved forward tonight by both parties, I think we both put some documents together, and we’re kind of going back and forth,” Boehlert said. “We’re just up against a timeline.”
The goal was initially to get the plan finalized before Spring Break, which starts this weekend, so staff could be informed of potential layoffs and be able to start their job search. Boehlert said that although a ‘no’ vote sets the timeline back, it’s not something that can’t be overcome.
During discussion, board member Jordan Tabb said because he hadn’t seen the edits made to the plan, he was conflicted on whether delaying approval was a good idea.
“I’m not certain whether the proposed changes are grammatical or material,” Tabb said. “Or if they’re going to impact the actual layoff or reduction in force and how that’s going to be operated, or who might be impacted if it really just is, ‘hey, we made some changes to the graduation requirements because we recognize that there was an error there.’ That doesn’t seem like something that it’s worth holding up this process on.”
Tabb said hearing the perspective of KEA would be helpful information to have ahead of the vote.
“I agree that some of it may just be language and wordsmithing,” KEA president Lindsay Tucker said. “But like we all say, it’s very important that we’re following the process and making it right.”
Board president Katherine Tatsuda said she had looked at some of the edits made to the plan, and didn’t want to delay the process further. She was the one member who voted to approve the current version.
Also in Wednesday night’s board packet, there was a partial and incomplete list of staff members’ names, up for contract renewal for the 2026-2027 school year. Those contracts are required by state law to be renewed annually, and school board president Tatsuda said it is not abnormal to include a list of names in the meeting packet. That list was removed from the meeting agenda.
The next time the RIF plan is likely to be considered is at the next regular school board meeting on March 25.
